


Bar Adventures (aka Bounty-Hunting)

by RubiniaChangeMadness (ChangeMadnessRubinia)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bountyhunter!Draco Malfoy, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-09 22:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11678625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChangeMadnessRubinia/pseuds/RubiniaChangeMadness
Summary: The bar was one of those that you can find in almost any big city and space station somewhere if you only look hard enough. Seedy, dirty, with cheap and bad alcohol and even worse clientele. You know, the type of bar where you can hire people to do some … well, illegal is not the right word, because that would mean the people in this bar were not the honest type of people they said they were and that would be plain ridiculous, but maybe discreet fits a little bit better; the point is, this was the place where you could find the people you needed if you had a problem and you needed someone from the ‘outside’ to ‘take a look’ at it. This specific bar was located in the beginning of the deeper levels of Coruscant but still high enough to attract respectable clientele – from time to time and only if you didn’t look to deeply into their records.





	1. An interesting job offer

**Author's Note:**

> Neither Harry Potter nor Star Wars belong to me and I don't make any profit by publishing this work, which is - aside from some characters and the setting - a product of my crazy mind. Hope you enjoy ;) Oh, and for a better understanding you should probably know that this story is part of a larger canon that I am still writing. (Actually, I am not entirely sure whether this is in the actual canon universe or maybe in one of the alternate ones, as my canon is a multiverse, sooo ...^^’)

The bar was one of those that you can find in almost any big city and space station somewhere if you only look hard enough. Seedy, dirty, with cheap and bad alcohol and even worse clientele. You know, the type of bar where you can hire people to do some … well, illegal is not the right word, because that would mean the people in this bar were not the honest type of people they said they were and that would be plain ridiculous, but maybe discreet fits a little bit better; the point is, this was the place where you could find the people you needed if you had a problem and you needed someone from the ‘outside’ to ‘take a look’ at it. This specific bar was in the beginning of the deeper levels of Coruscant but still high enough to attract respectable clientele – from time to time and only if you didn’t look to deeply into their records.

A friend and colleague of mine, probably known by some of you already by his birth name Draco Malfoy, known in this bar by Smaras, sat beside me at the bar. We were having our first round of drinks this evening – Corellian Whiskey, not particularly tasty if you have ever tasted real Scottish Whisky (and to be honest, it was probably fake, there’s just no way Corellian Whisky tastes like an engine smells, but ah well, I already mentioned the quality of the alcohol, didn’t I?) – when a discussion at a table in the obligatory dark corner of the bar began to get heated.

“Nonononono, forget about it, ‘m out!” The, ah, person with ‘acquirable loyalty’ said loudly and stood up, presumably to leave the bar. One second later, they (it might have been a ‘he’ but since The Incident I have been a bit more careful with gender-pronouns so I just use neutral ones whenever I’m unsure) stood still for a second and then fell backwards. Silence descended upon the room as if someone had activated the mute function on a TV by stumbling against it. Everything missing for this scenario was the subsequent cursing and hopping around of someone who had stubbed their toe and the cursing of someone else who couldn’t find the remote control.

“Anyone interested in a job? The position has just become available”, a voice, probably humanoid and with no bodily gender discernible, asked from within the shadows of the corner.

I looked to Smaras and raised an eyebrow. He watched me for a second and then, without turning his head or even raising his voice, answered,” What ‘bout a second position?”

“What do you mean, a ‘second position’?”, the voice asked. I repressed a smile.

“No need ta sound so confused, man!”, Smaras answered, “Would ya care ta count a second man in?”

“That is not possible”, the voice had lost its confusion and replaced it with determination instead. This time I couldn’t help my smile.

“How wonderful”, I said. Smaras and I stood, took our drinks and relocated to the shady table. As we sat down, someone apparently had found the remote control for the TV and turned the sound back on as the chatter from before returned.

“What?! I said –“ “Yes, I know exactly what you said”, I interrupted the owner of the voice. “And you said that it is not possible for a second _man_ to join. You never said anything about a woman.”

“But – “ “And from the reaction o’me friend here tha’ got ‘imself killed, ya gonna need someone willing ta risk somethin’”, Smaras interrupted him quietly, “An’ she’s one o’those willing ta do a _lot_. If the price’s right, o’course.” He added a wink.

“And if I might give you an advice free of charge: keep your voice down a bit. You never know who might try to overhear you”, I whispered.

“So. Ya said somethin’ ‘bout a job. Let’s hear it!”, Smaras said and took a sip of his drink. A second later he grimaced. “Urgh!”

I snorted in amusement before I got my face under control again and returned my attention to the client in the shadows. “Well? You have our full attention.”

Our slightly unwilling client sighed. “Alright, alright. The job consists of going into a highly secured place and recovering something that rightfully belongs to me. The payment consists of one million credits.”

“Where’s the catch?”, my partner asked, the scepticism clear in his voice.

“The ‘catch’, as you call it, is that you have to enter the Jedi Temple.”

I made an interested noise. “And the target?”, I asked.

  
A second person, who had been silent until now, pushed a holo-projector across the table. It showed a blue and white flower.

                                                 

“This flower is one of its last exemplars. I would like you to get it within three days”, the first person (probably human, around 20 to 25 years old, upper middle class or higher, the second person was a bodyguard?) said. I looked to Smaras. After a moment of consideration, he said, “Sounds interesting. We’ll do it.”

“After your work is done, bring the required object in this” – with those words the second person put a box on the table – “to the safe deposit box 241-559 in the bank on level 3501 in the Financial District. After checking that you have indeed delivered the right object you shall receive your payment.”

“Now how do we know ya ain’t shitting us, ey?”, Smaras inquired.

“What my partner means to say is: we want some of the money beforehand”, I clarified before one of our clients could take offence.

They exchanged a look. After a few seconds, the first person (the probability of them being a him and a human between 20 and 25 years old was increasing every time he spoke; how lucky for us) gave in:”Alright, you shall receive a tenth – “

“Half!”

“I beg your pardon?” Why, oh why did exactly this client have to be this stilted?

“Ya understood me just right! I said half”, Smaras repeated gruffly. I sighed.

“He means we want half of our payment beforehand”, I explained.

“I … am afraid that is not possible. Could we come to an agreement on 250,000?”, the probable human said, slightly intimidated.

“400,000”, my incorrigible partner insisted.

“No higher than 280,000”, the very probable human returned. Once again, I sighed, this time exasperated.

“How about we cut this negotiation a bit shorter? 300,000 Credits before we do our job, and we want to see the money either now on the table or in ten minutes on our account”, I interrupted the so-called negotiation (seriously, this was developing into more of a pissing contest than serious negotiations for payment). The second client (the bodyguard?) touched the being that was a human with a likelihood of 99 percent on the shoulder before he (although the gender was more of a guess than anything else) could protest and whispered something into his ear. He took one deep breath, then he said, “Agreed. If you could give me your account number I shall handle the transfer right away.”

This earned him a highly sarcastic “Thank you” from my sometimes truly exasperating partner. Within the next ten minutes our account had 300,000 Credits added and Smaras had ordered himself a new drink (though why he took the same drink as before was beyond me).

“To success then”, I said, clinked glasses with Smaras and drank the rest of my whiskey in one go. After setting the glass onto the table, I turned to go and dragged Smaras with a “Come, Smaras!” in the direction of the exit.

“Wait!”, the male human exclaimed. We stopped, barely three metres away from the table. “What is your name?”

“Smaras, pretty sure ya heard it alright”, my partner growled.

“No, I mean your partner’s name”, he said with a quiet laugh tinted with – was that embarrassment?

Smaras groaned, although very quietly. I chuckled and turned around with a smile on my face.

“My name is whatever you wish to call me. Just tell me beforehand so I have a chance to react. If you cannot come up with anything call me Maddie. But please” – and with those words my smile turned into a smirk – “only if you have truly no other idea. Good evening, Gentleman.”   

I turned on my heel, grabbed Smaras arm and walked right out of the door.

When we were more than 50 metres away from the bar Draco sighed. “Did you have to drag me out of there? I swear your control over your strength is slipping again, I'm certain I'll have bruises tomorrow!”, he complained. “And do I have to keep up this ridiculous accent, I sound like an idiot!”

“Oh Drake, the accent was your idea in the first place! And yes, I had to drag you, your face was priceless.”

“And what did you do to my drink? I am sure it didn’t taste that bad when I took the first sip.”

“Hm? I did nothing!”, I said with my most innocent voice and expression. Unfortunately, my Draco-Darling did not believe me if his expression was anything to go by.

“Oh, just you wait for my revenge!”, Draco fumed. I just giggled and started running towards our apartment. We had a theft to plan.  

 


	2. Planning

A few hours later Draco and I were sitting in the small kitchen of the apartment we had rented some weeks ago. It had been supposed be just a place where we could sleep and sometimes eat and had because of that no living space and no comfortable sitting furniture to speak of. Well, there would have been the bed, but that was no place we had wanted to sit on while planning. And before you start thinking something along the lines of ‘Maddie and Draco sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G’: nope, not together, just partners and friends for bounty-hunting and partying. The only apartment in the right (read: only interesting) neighbourhood available simply happened to have just one double bed and no living room with a couch and, well, what is there to say but this: good friends who know exactly what they want from each other (in this case: nothing aside from a good friendship, get your minds out of the gutter) can also sleep together in one bed. But I digress. During the weeks we had spent on Coruscant we had actually spent very little time in the apartment, and according to that it was ‘decorated’ with bits of dirty laundry, some (thankfully) empty takeout boxes and the occasional half-finished electronic device that we had fiddled with to make it compatible to magic or be able to search for magic. Fortunately, we still had a blueprint of the Jedi Temple from my last hacking into the Temples archives and though this fact made our planning easier it was still challenging. Our research had yielded some quite interesting facts, for example something about our target: the flower we were supposed to ‘recover’ was indeed a very rare flower, though it was by far not one of the last of its kind. And it needed a lot of humidity to survive, which made the likelihood of the flower being in just a random room very low. Unfortunately, there existed more than just one area within the Temple that met with the specific requirements, and that got us to this situation.

“I’m telling you, the flower is in the agricultural research area!”, Draco exclaimed.

“And I’m telling you it’s in the Room of a Thousand Fountains!”, I said (or shouted).

“Just let me do a boosted scan once we’re inside and you will see that the flower is in agricultural research!”, he growled.

“And why, pray tell, should the flower be there and not in a nearby almost natural environment?”, I shot back.

“Because they might be experimenting with it!”

“Oh really, with a rare flower that just grows with incredibly much water nearby?”

“Yes!”

“And what would be the point of the experiments?”

“Proving a potential healing capability!”

“Proving a potential healing capability? Of what?”

“Bruises.”

I sighed. The discussion had dragged on and on in a similar course for almost half an hour by now and we still hadn’t reached a decision. At least we had been able to come to an understanding that we wanted to proceed in the following night, which left us with two days to plan or react if anything unexpected were to happen. And that was, considering that Draco was after all a wizard in basically the wrong part of the universe and that I sometimes attracted trouble like a lit lamp in the evening attracts moths, unfortunately very likely.

“Alright, you win, you can do your scan once we’re inside”, I said and admitted my defeat. This got a whoop and a small victory dance out of him.

“Wait a second, have you just made a fuss because you wanted to try the new scanner?”, I asked alarmed.

“You have already agreed!”, Draco said with a grin. I groaned and buried my face in my hands, already regretting my decision.

“Now that we have _finally_ ended this discussion, might we go on with planning?”, I mumbled through my hands.

“Of course!”, Draco answered happily and turned back to the blueprints of our target location.

“How and where do you propose to enter the Temple?”

“I thought we could use the air vents and maintenance routes within the Temple after taking the back door”, I replied with a shrug. “And we could use our speeder to get there. It would also be useful to make a quick escape afterwards if something should go wrong.”

“We would have to watch out for surveillance both around the Temple and in traffic”, and promptly came the counterargument, what did I expect? Simply accepting everything I had thought of? Ah, but exactly this was the reason why Draco was such a good partner in bounty-hunting: he thought things through and said whenever a plan sounded unrealistic. However, I still had a few tricks and ideas up my sleeves.

“Are you a wizard or not? A Notice-Me-Not-Charm should do, I think. And together with the magically improved version of the camouflage canvas we and the speeder would be unnoticeable.”

“Are you sure you’re not forgetting something? That’s the Jedi Temple we’re supposed to break into! Jedi! Temple! That means everyone in there is Force-sensitive!” Draco stood up and started to pace the small kitchen while gesturing wildly.

“Relax, Darling, shouldn’t you know me better than this by now? I mean, how many years have it been since we started doing this? Four? Five? And by the way, I’ve still got the necklaces with the taozin nodules! You’ll see, we’ll be in and out of there before anyone has even noticed that we were there.”

“Trust you of all people to have some Force suppressing jewellery at hand. And don’t call me ‘darling’!”, he muttered darkly while letting himself fall back onto his chair. I laughed.

“As you wish, _Honey_. And the nodules don’t suppress the Force, they just make it almost impossible to be felt in it.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “To-may-to, to-mah-to!”

I decided to not-dignify this answer by sticking my tongue out at him. His response consisted of an affronted breath-take. I chuckled. Planning with Draco-Honey was just always so much fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wondering, a taozin is some kind of worm from the Star Wars canon. It has some kind of nodules on its shell armor which makes it very difficult for Force-sensitive people to feel them; very useful ^^ (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Taozin)


	3. The Jedi Temple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there, I'm back! Sorry for the wait, real life was really distracting. And although it was fun, writing more than one word was almost impossible. But now all major distractions are finished (at least for now) and I hope to finish this story in two weeks at the latest. And now: enjoy!

The following evening's setting sun did not see Draco and I park the speeder in a side street near the back entrance of the Jedi Temple for multiple reasons: First, on Coruscant and especially near the Temple District the skyscrapers were simply too big to let the sunlight get to every inch of the ‘floor’. Second, the camouflage canvas was spread across the speeder, which camouflage setting was also turned on, and us. And third, Draco had put a [technologically] boosted Notice-Me-Not on both us and the speeder. Now I don’t know whether a sun has enough intellect to understand what its light hits/touches or not, but even if Coruscant Prime was able to do so it would have no longer worked with us.

“Do you have your necklace?”, I asked while jumping out of the speeder. He sighed.

 “Yes, I’m still wearing it! And you just asked this for the fourth time in one half hour, what are you, my mother?”, he hissed. I barely refrained from cackling out loud.

 “Well, I’m certainly old enough … son”, I answered with a wink.

 “Urgh, can we please put this discussion off for another day, you don’t even look a day older than 30 and we still have a job to do!”

 I made a zipping motion across my mouth and winked, then turned to look at the Temple’s back entrance.

 "So, let's do this!"

* * *

Entering the Temple wasn't as hard as it sounds, especially if you keep in mind that this weren't the times of the Clone Wars but rather still the time of the Galactic Republic or more specifically the year 50 B.B.Y. instead, which meant that the security was more for show than anything, at least in my opinion, and that we wore the taozin-necklaces to keep all the Force-sensitives from noticing us. If you add our careful creeping around and using more or less abandoned (read: empty because it was night by now) hallways to our camouflage equipment, the only critical point as of yet had been tiptoeing past the guard at the back door (seriously, who guards a back door (and for show no less)? Aside from the truly paranoid and those who have something to hide?). And when Draco turned his newly configurated scanner on. Although that was more of an accident really, because he had forgotten to turn off the tone that sounded when the scan was complete. Thankfully, no one was in our immediate vicinity, otherwise we probably would have encountered at least some trouble.

A quiet “What?!” redirected my attention towards my partner who was concentrating his complete attention on examining his scanner.

 “What is it?”, I asked.

 “That is impossible … I was so sure …”, was the only muttered answer I received.

 “Honey! What is it?”, I asked again, impatiently and slightly louder this time. The scanner result was critical for the success of the job, without it we would have to search manually for the flower and while we had at least two identified areas where it might be found it would still take a lot of time; especially the Room of a Thousand Fountains as it was not exactly an area I would have described as ‘small’. And we were under a _little bit_ of time pressure.

 “That … that damned flower is indeed in the Room of a Thousand Fountains!”, he let out an almost silent string of curses in at least a dozen languages known to this part of the galaxy.

 “What? Let me see!”, I demanded and almost ripped the scanner out of his hands. And indeed: the scanner, a fusion of a modified Point-Me-Spell, a databank filled with the chemical composition of the most common things one might come across (and also some not so common) and a detector modified for long distance searches clearly showed the flower to be in the Room of a Thousand Fountains and nowhere else in the Temple. 

"Hah", I said triumphantly. "Pay up, Honey!"

"Pah!"

(Did I mention the bet about the location of the flower we had made after finishing our planning for the job already? If I didn’t I did so now. By the way, the wager consisted of (unfortunately only) 50 Credits. I would have rather had a upgrading of one weapon of the winners choice as wager or at least a higher amount, but Draco refused wholeheartedly. Spoil sport.)

 

The rest of the job was actually rather boring. Breaking into the Room of a Thousand Fountains consisted of creeping through the air vents and the in the Room growing plants. In combination with the scanner it was also quite easy to find a gathering of the flower, so everything left to do was to grab one exemplar and get the hell out of there. Or at least was that the plan. In reality, one very green, very diminutive Jedi with a walking stick and a decidedly grammar problem was - because of course our luck wouldn't hold - meditating directly next to the probably biggest and only gathering of the target flower; I'm pretty sure it was at least the one with the most beautiful exemplars. I shot Draco a pained look.

'Wait?', I signed.

'Proceed', he signed back.

(What? Military shorthand has a rather limited range of signals that are drastically shortened, everything else would be just impractical.) What followed were over four hours of waiting, hidden behind of bushes bigger than that green annoyance, and exercising patience.

When Yoda finally stopped meditating the evening hours, even midnight were hours long gone. And my legs had gone to sleep. My partner apparently as well, or at least his eyes were closed and his breathing very regular. Yoda's steps together with the regular tapping of his gimer stick faded away in the distance, a door opened and closed, then it became quiet in what was - in my opinion - nothing more than a gigantic indoor park with limited access and a very selective system of gaining permission to enter. I prodded Draco's arm - the only body part I could reach without moving my legs and consequently starting the pins and needles inside. He opened one eye to give me a glare that clearly said “What?”. I gestured towards the place where this nuisance of a Grand Master had interrupted our job for over four hours, then I signed ‘Proceed’ in direction of the gathering of flowers. He nodded. It took my complete self control not to start hopping around and cursing, because seriously, pins and needles from sitting still for more than four hours _hurt_. Aside from this _minor_ (please note the sarcasm) interruption, everything left to do was indeed very boring, so why describe in detail how we dug the plant out, transferred it to the prepared container and then made sure to _get the hell out of there_.

* * *

Back in our flat, I was _very_ glad to finally faceplant into my half of the bed. Draco joined me after setting the container onto the kitchen table.

“Urgh”, I groaned, “what a night.”

He mumbled something that sounded like an affirmative, groaned unhappily but still sat up to remove his boots, then let himself fall backwards onto the bed again.

“Why did we accept this job again?”, he asked tiredly.

“Aingewaameemaamoeeangoeeeeeng.”

“Ah. And when it’s not mumbled into the pillow?”, he asked, presumably with a raised eyebrow but how should I know, I was still busy trying to burrow myself in the pillow. Grumbling, I sat up.

“I said, I think it was a feeling that it was going to be interesting”, I repeated myself with emphasis. My partner scoffed, but before he could start a tirade about how interesting and dangerous and what-not this job had been until now, I continued:” And I think that it might become even more interesting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Errrr .... wow, now I somehow wrote a cliffhanger (muhahaha ;) ). Ah well, let's hope that the words come faster for the next chapter :P
> 
> (Added on October 3, 2017)  
> Alright, here a quick update for those still interested: I'm not dead, I'm still writing on chapter 4 and I have been working on a German translation of this work. As I have some problems translating English into German, this takes a while, but I'm almost through with chapter 1 (yay ^^). As soon as I have posted the first chapter of the German version I will go straight back to wrangling the fourth chapter into submission; let's hope the case of writer's block that has haunted me since posting the third chapter will soon cease to do so (though I have already defeated some parts of chapter 4 so it stands to reason that I will update soon ^^)


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